


if you must weep, do it right here in my bed as i sleep

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: 1800s, Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M, First Meetings, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 03:58:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18335735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Shuichi becomes King suddenly after his parents' assassination. Falling into depression, he finds that there are people who care about him, people who he thought forgot him, and a new Royal Pianist to try and lift his spirits.





	if you must weep, do it right here in my bed as i sleep

When Shuichi was a child, he was called _Prince._ He roamed the castle, thinking that he was free; with wide-eyed wonder, his hands touched each wall as if for the first time, his mind racing with adventure and stories. His world was coloured inside the lines of the Kingdom, only venturing outside with his hand gripped tightly in his mother’s, looking at the sky and wondering why he couldn’t go back to his vast garden sooner - he wanted for nothing, in the same way that a child born into royalty will never know what it is like to be otherwise. Nothing was expected of him other than that he would smile for press portraits in the arms of his loving parents, the delight of royal balls and galas, never being taught how to feel dissatisfied.

He remembers, distinctly, that it was raining on his twentieth birthday, when he received the news. That his parents, regrettably out of the country on royal business, had been assassinated. Killed. Murdered. They were _dead._ And he was left to pick up the pieces of the crown.

He never wanted to be King, and his mind has not changed in the two years since receiving the title. With all the pomp and circumstance of official balls, the Grand Coronation, all of the press dinners and speeches and promises he was told to make, he was never given any time to grieve. What would have been a normal processing of emotions instead bottled itself up in his chest, splitting him into two people - the Shuichi that the outside world saw, regal and proper, showing himself to the public as little as possible without causing concern; and the real Shuichi, the one who clings to his twentieth birthday like he hasn’t aged a day since. The same man who no longer cries himself to sleep, merely because he no longer _can_ sleep. He spends nights awake, wide-eyed now for a different reason, the glassy emptiness drilling into his brain as he feels, with each day that passes, increasingly alone. 

When the world mourned the loss of his parents, it forgot to consider what they were leaving behind.

As the cool air of night pricks his skin, Shuichi stands on his balcony in only his night-shirt, wanting to feel so cold that he forgets he inhabits a body at all. The stars are all out tonight, and he thinks of the only friend he ever had as a child, Kaito Momota, the son of another royal family, who visited sometimes alongside his parents and talked of how he was going to go to the stars one day. Even he, too, lost contact with Shuichi, but he doesn’t blame him. He knows how miserable he is, and he wouldn’t want to put the burden of interacting with him upon anyone else - even though, rationally, he knows that this is not the case. His childhood friend is merely too caught up in the circumstances of being born into royalty to spend time being a normal twenty-two year old. That much he can relate to.

Often, on nights like this, Shuichi thinks of what would happen if he were to slip and fall from the balcony. Either intentionally or not, the only thing that pulls him back is the fear of falling - not of hitting the ground, but of that two second liminality in which he would know, for the first time, that the inevitable is immutable. Resting his chin in his hands, he starts to cry. It’s all he’s good for, now.

Softly, his tears begin to form music. Gentle piano sings to him from below the balcony, humming alongside the night, so graceful that he can’t even imagine it’s being played by someone. It’s so soft, and so in tune with his own sadness, he convinces himself he must be imagining it. It’s not until the music halts at the light conclusion that he finds himself clapping, not as a forced action, not like it’s expected of him at the end of a royal performance, rather, a genuine appreciation for whatever Deity has brought him something that speaks to his soul.

And then he hears a voice from below.

“Hello?”

“H-Hello?” Shuichi replies, leaning over the balcony to see who was playing the piano under the veranda.

“Hold on, I’m coming up!”

“W-Wait, who a-are y-”

“Gimme a sec,” the voice shouts, “I’m coming.”

A blonde woman comes into view, climbing the vines that lead from the ground up to his balcony. She’s wearing a long, translucent-white nightdress, and she smiles up at him; he’s stunned, unable to speak when she reaches the top and climbs over the rail.

“I’m Kaede,” she says, “nice to meet’cha!”

“S-Shuichi.”

“Yeah, I know that!”

“W-Who are y-you?”

“Oh don’t worry, I’m not here to rob ya or anythin’. Wouldn’t’a played piano beforehand, would I? Nah, I got a letter from Kaito Momota, y’know him?”

“Y-Yes, we w-were friends as children.”

“He’s been worried about ya. Says he’s been writin’ ya but got no response.”

“O-Oh. I haven’t…n-noticed. Sorry.”

“Well, he thought some cheerin’ up was in order for you, so, here I am! Newly appointed Royal Pianist!”

“T-Thanks, but I d-don’t think piano m-music is going to help me o-out.”

“Nah, you just haven’t found the right song yet! C’mon, let’s go inside.”

She leads him into his own bedroom by the hand, sitting down on his bed. Stunned, he follows her and sits down too.

“Now,” she says, “it was supposed to be a surprise, but I saw that piano in the garden and couldn’t _not,_ ya know? Kaito’s here and everythin’! We sailed in together a few days ago, got here just an hour or so back. He’s already asleep in one of the guest bedrooms, but I was too anxious t’play for someone as important as you, so I took a nighttime walk, saw the piano, ’n well, the rest is history, I guess.”

“K-Kaito’s…h-here?”

“Yeah! What, you thought he’d forgot about ya?”

“I…I g-guess, yeah.”

“Nah. Tell ya, the whole world’s been worried sick since…you know.”

“Well, I’m f-fine,” he says, the mere thought of the lie pulling tears from his eyes like looping a lasso around the moon and bringing it crashing down. Beautiful, but deadly.

“It’s alright not t’be, ya know? C’mon, I’m sure one of the bedrooms in this place must have a piano in it.”

“Y-Yeah…I think.”

She whirlwinds through the corridors, running and laughing and spinning, not worried about being loud. He has to run to keep up with her as she, ethereal, lays claim to the whole castle as a newfound place of happiness. When they find a bedroom with a piano, she sits straight at it, telling him to go to sleep and she’ll play for him. She’ll play for him, all night. She’ll play for him, until he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my amazing friend Callie for her birthday! Happy birthday! 
> 
> The song that Kaede is playing is _Gymnopédie No. 2_ by Erik Satie.
> 
> Title from 'You' by Keaton Henson.


End file.
